


The Devil's Husband: Last Witch Hunter

by Saintduma



Series: NaNoWriMo: The Devil's Husband [1]
Category: Original Work, The Last Witch Hunter (2015)
Genre: Hael - Freeform, M/M, NaNoWriMo, Sachael Urmen, The Last Witch Hunter, Vin Diesel - Freeform, explicit violence, suggested sexual activity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 09:31:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5158769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saintduma/pseuds/Saintduma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is part of a series done for NaNoWriMo.  It is not at all edited.  The "chapters" are very short, because they're really just bursts of words, not because they're meant to be full-length chapters by any means.  This is primarily just so I can organize them.</p><p>This section is Hael in The Last Witch Hunter, the 2015 movie starring Vin Diesel.</p><p>Hael is discovered by Kaulder.  They 'make friends'. And then terrible things happen to Hael because that's how this works.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The smoke that curled from the tip of the cigarette in Hael’s many-ringed fingers smelled heavily of spices that not even Kaulder knew the names of. The air was sticky, making Hael feel like his skin was too much like a cheap sheet of flypaper; anything could touch him and just stick, and stay, and he was reminded, vaguely, of the fact he had always avoided the sub-tropics in the summer. ‘Always’ like he could remember all of those summers; ‘always’ like he had choices, sometimes, of where fate deposited him. 

“You’re not a witch,” the man named Kaulder said to him, and Hael shook his head, taking a long draw off of the cigarette, the ember flaring bright for a moment before settling back into a bright cherry. He exhaled through his nose, and flicked the ash from the tip of it into the gravel below the hood of the car he sat perched on. 

“No,” he said. “No, I am not a witch.”

“You know where Inoan went.” Kaulder made it a statement, and the strange man named Hael just nodded as he took another draw from his cigarette and hopped off the hood of the car, and flicked the cigarette into the gravel, grinding the jagged stones over it with his sneaker to extinguish it. “Where?”

“Hell,” Hael replied simply. Kaulder looked annoyed, like Hael was being dismissive, like Hael was lying. “What? Do you think they did not have souls?”

“They’re not human,” Kaulder said.

“That does not mean they do not have souls,” Hael replied, patient. “Trust me. I know when something has a soul, and when it lacks. I know when a soul is redeemable, and I know when it should not be. She is no longer a problem for you.”

This one was going to be a problem, Kaulder decided. If he lingered, if he could ‘take care’ of a ‘problem’ like the witch Inoen, if he had such confidence to speak to Kaulder like this, as if Kaulder was no threat, nothing to be concerned about-- 

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” Kaulder asked suddenly. 

“No, of course not,” Hael replied, smiling at him, and opening the door of his primered old diesel Volkswagen Jetta, which did not smell like the cigarettes he’d been smoking, and leaned on the top of the door, folding his ringed hands together and looking at him. “But I might like to.”

Kaulder smiled.


	2. Chapter 2

Hael could feel the mattress move as Kaulder moved to sit, and then stand, leaving Hael tangled in the expensive hotel linens. He stretched and ran one many-ringed hand through his hair, looking up at the man as he pulled his designer jeans on, threading his belt through the buckle and adjusting it so that it sat correctly on his hips. The muscles that moved under his skin as he stooped to scoop up his shirt and shrug it over his head were muscles that had hundreds and hundreds of years to refine themselves, to grow accustomed to his form, to optimize his movements. He had seen those muscles a few hours ago, lit only by moonlight through the big window that faced the ocean, being used for the express purpose of coupling, and now, the only thing Kaulder was concerned about was getting dressed and leaving Hael comfortably in this room before the gray pre-dawn broke under the sun’s rays and flooded this room in light. 

Hael knew when he was a diversion, and nothing else. He didn’t hold it against Kaulder; neither of them had explained themselves to the other. Kaulder had simply wanted to push him, to see how much of him was a threat, and to satisfy his curiosity. He was satisfied enough to walk away.

“You’re awake,” Kaulder said, having noticed him shift his weight in the sheets.

“I do not really need to sleep. I just like to. Do you sleep?” Hael was curious.

“I try to. I feel better when I do.” 

“Me too.” 

A comfortable silence stretched, as Kaulder pulled on a shoulder holster, and a jacket cut smart enough to look smooth over the guns. Hael stayed where he was, thankful for air conditioning, and expensive climate control that kept the dampness of the Southeastern summers securely outside. He knew he could order breakfast soon, and it would be delivered, even after Kaulder was gone. He could check out and Kaulder’s heavy black credit card would simply be charged from afar. There would be no awkward phone calls. 

Kaulder had tucked his phone and car keys into his pocket, and then looked at Hael, sprawled in the sheets, so much more copper than his own sun-darkened skin, and still freckled, with all that black curly hair. He turned back fully to the bed and put a knee on it, leaning over to catch Hael’s mouth with his own, hands planted on either side of Hael’s chest. 

“You’re not going to ask me to stay?” Kaulder asked, smiling a little.

“No,” Hael replied. “Unless you want me to, and this is your way of requesting me to.”

“I have to get back to New York,” Kaulder said, and paused. “You’re welcome to come with me.”

“You do not want me to come,” Hael said, running his fingers over Kaulder’s cheek, and Kaulder marveled, for not the first time in the last eight hours, how very warm his skin was. “I do not need to be a mind-reading witch to know you do not want to be attached to me.”

“I don’t say things I don’t mean,” Kaulder said. 

“I am flattered by your curiosity,” Hael murmured against Kaulder’s mouth, inviting another kiss, which Kaulder gave with enthusiasm, before righting himself and standing again. 

“If you’re in New York,” Kaulder said. 

“I will find a witch and ask them how to find you,” Hael smiled, even as his own lie turned the taste of his mouth sour. He had no intention of asking after Kaulder. He wondered if Kaulder knew it, because he didn’t seem to, to Hael, as he picked up a rucksack and smiled as he left.


	3. Chapter 3

“Don’t worry, dear. We’re not going to hurt you.” 

The fact that Danique purred the lie didn’t make it any less sour in Hael’s mouth, and when he spat in her face, he could smell that acidity in his saliva on her skin, even as she showed all her teeth in what was supposed to be a smile, and wiped at her face with a silk kerchief. The guards holding him off the ground, stripped naked of everything but his rings, cinched the cuffs around his wrists that much tighter, creating a sharp pain against the bone of his wrists, and he hissed wordlessly at her. 

“Well if you can’t be bothered to be civil,” she scoffed, and snapped her fingers. The guards marched him to the other side of the room, and a young witch in a silk dress opened the doors to an intricately carved large wood cabinet. Hael’s mouth went dry, making the sourness of her lies ever more unpleasant, seeing two gleaming silver hooks inside. He could smell the fresh paint, and under it, the old blood. The bottom was metal, inscribed with runes he did not know how to read, and drained to one side. The large bodyguards had no problem turning him around and holding him up as the young witch pulled one of the silver hooks to the end of its chain and found the space under his shoulderblade, narrowly avoiding his lung as she pushed it up and under the bone. He didn’t bother to not scream; it hurt, and he could not remember the last time something like this had happened to him, but he knew it had, and that was almost worse. She pulled the other hook down, and it went in the other side, his blood running down his back freely. The hooks penetrated all the way through his shoulder and curled out long enough to scratch his collarbones. The guards held him still as the witch in the silk dress cuffed his ankles together, and tried to get him to bend his knees to swing him into the cabinet. He refused to, and even with the hooks holding him up now, twisted to try to keep them from being able to easily lock him away. It only worked for a few moments, until one of the guards drew a firearm, put it to his left knee, and pulled the trigger. Pain exploded through his knee, and it was little effort to get him tucked into the cabinet. 

“Aren’t you just a fascinating piece of work,” Danique purred as he hung there, hands still securely cuffed behind his back, tears in streaks down his cheeks. She ran her finger down his thigh to his destroyed knee, which was trying already to put itself back together. He could feel the spells she had worked on her skin, trying to keep herself youthful. “When I figure out what you’ve done to keep that pretty body of yours the way it is, I’ll let what’s left of you go.”

“Shuk tski khalpe la royasa,” Hael growled at her, “Beauty cannot be eaten with a spoon.” She laughed at that, and then smacked him sharply, one of her rings opening a new wound on his cheek. Baring her teeth in that same expression that was supposed to be a smile, she leaned in, and licked the blood from his cheek. 

“I don’t need your platitudes,” she grinned with bloodstained teeth, and snapped her fingers again. The doors were slammed shut, and suddenly he was left with only the sound of his blood dripping against the metal floor, the suffocation of a hush spell heavy on his skin from the sealed doors.

Time stretched, marked only by the doors opening occasionally to slice his femoral artery in his thigh, to start a fresh flow of blood onto the metal floor. It was never the falsely youthful witch Danique who did it, but one of her young, fearful underlings who did it with different metal bolines, quickly and without looking at him, closing him back into the quiet as soon as they could. He would scream when they did it, to watch them wince, hoping to find one with a shred of compassion in their souls he could latch onto and escape the cupboard. But Danique had too much fear in them, and it was nothing, and nothing, and only by his glimpses of light through those brief openings did he understand that weeks stretched by.

He could not sleep, and did not eat, as nothing was offered him. But he lived, and lived, and after a while, even new cuts did not hurt so much. Hael knew how pain became normal. It never stopped hurting, but it became normal. 

It was sometime in the fall when the doors opened, and instead of one of the underlings, it was Danique who stood with a boline made of black glassy stone. He recognized her immediately, despite the fact that she looked completely different, her skin ragged and old, even decayed; whatever enchantment she had done to keep her young had been broken, and recently. He could smell it on her decaying skin, the recent rendering of magic, and it made him recoil. 

That made her angry. The old witch grabbed his neck and pulled him forward on those hooks, and dragged the glassy stone along his skin, opening a deep wound, and then grabbing a bowl from one of her underlings, who shied from her reflexively. She caught the blood as it ran down his chest and glared up at him. 

“Shuk tski khalpe la royasa,” he croaked at her, baring his own teeth at her in a snarling smile as the wound on his neck closed itself, only a tiny pool of blood in her bowl, not nearly enough for whatever it was she wanted to do. 

She gave a howl of rage at that, and snapped the boline back over her head, and then sunk it into his chest, into his heart, and ripped downward, severing a few of his ribs from his sternum as she did. He screamed as his heartsblood spurted into the bowl, filling it quickly now as his body struggled to heal itself fast enough to keep him alert, even while he craved unconsciousness. The world was swimming a little at the edges, and he tried to focus on her decrepit face, tried to sneer more, tried to incite her to twist the boline, to give him unconsciousness. 

It worked. She turned it in a full circle inside of his chest, cutting through his lungs and his heart, and the world was suddenly much more difficult to focus on, and then dark.

He woke again, though, some hours later, in the dark silence of his cabinet. And he wished he’d spent just a little more time asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

The security woman at the front desk was apologetic. 

“She refused to leave,” she said to Kaulder, indicating the witch wearing a hoop-skirt inspired trench coat, her black hair styled into finger waves, wringing red gloves in her hands. “She said she had to see you.”

“I need to talk to you,” the witch said. “But I need to know you’re not going to kill me.”

Kaulder pushed the ‘up’ button on the elevator and glared at the witch. “Get in.” He waited until she had swooped into the elevator before stepping in after her. He refused to speak in the elevator, forcing an uncomfortable silence as the witch was clearly already anxious, and stepped out into the first room of his penthouse, one that didn’t give access to the rest easily at all. 

“I need to know you’re not going to kill me,” she said again.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he said, with a shrug. “But you’re making me think that you’ve done something worth considering it.”

“I haven’t,” she said quickly, and then looked unsure. “It’s Danique. She’s... since her spell was broken.” The witch was avoiding blaming it on Kaulder, trying to not explicitly say that it was Kaulder who had broken it; no one was really sure, because the only people who had been in the room had been Kaulder, Danique, and the witch who had recently helped Kaulder defeat an ancient evil for a second time. But any witch watched their tongue with Kaulder. “She’s been performing experimental magic for some time now, on a man she’s kept in a wardrobe. But after her spell was broken she’s been torturing him-- so much worse. I heard him screaming yesterday. Before it was just-- a cut, once in awhile. I don’t know what she’s doing now.”

“How do you know about him?” Kaulder asked, and the witch wrung her red leather gloves again. 

“We’ve all had to cut him,” she said. “She’s trying to figure out how it works. How he doesn’t age or die. He’s not like you.” She took a step back, because Kaulder’s entire demeanor had changed. He uncrossed his arms, and stood straight, rather than with his weight on one leg, and his scowl had deepened. “You said you won’t kill me,” she reminded him.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he growled deeply at her.

“What are you going to do?” she asked quickly.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to,” he said.


	5. Chapter 5

The doors of the wardrobe opened. For a long moment, Hael refused to open his eyes, until he took a deep breath, and the only scent of the decrepit witch Danique was of her blood. He didn’t have to open his eyes to recognize that soul, and he gave a wordless sound, a moan almost, of relief, and his black eyes slitted open, focusing on Kaulder’s face. 

“I should have just given you my cell phone number,” Kaulder said, reaching in and pulling first one, then the other, hook out of his shoulder, and taking all Hael’s weight in his arms. “This was not the witch you should have asked to look me up while you were in New York.”

“I was a souvenir from Milan, I did not exactly get a lot of time to ask around,” Hael replied, his voice croaky from only being used to scream, and dehydrated. 

“Definitely should have given you my cell phone.” Kaulder settled him on one of the ottomans and pulled a tool out of his pocket, carefully levering the cuffs on Hael’s wrists open, and slipping them down off of his hands, and then undoing the chains around his feet. He reached up then, and put his hands on either side of Hael’s face, meeting his eyes. “Is it too early to ask you to come over to my place?” Trying to keep him amused, trying to keep him engaged.

“No, not too early,” Hael replied, smiling a little. “But definitely too early to offer me a drawer.”

Kaulder chuckled, and took one of the robes offered him by one of the young witches who had not fled when he had stormed in looking for Danique. He wrapped it carefully around Hael and carried him out through one of the back doors to where the car was running, waiting, a red-haired witch behind the wheel who peered at him through the window as Kaulder approached, and then got out to open the back door to help Kaulder get him settled into the back seat. 

“You must be the Hael I’ve heard exactly nothing about,” she said. “I’m Chloe.”

“Hi Chloe,” Hael said. “If it is fair, I have heard nothing about you either.” 

“Well, Kaulder says you’ve been locked in a cupboard a few months, so that’s completely fair.”

“Then you’ve heard a little more than nothing,” Hael smiled. 

Chloe smiled as well, and looked at Kaulder as he got into the passenger side. “I like him. What is he? He’s definitely not a witch.”

Kaulder glanced in the rearview mirror at Hael, whose eyes were closed, his head leaning fully back, resting for the first time in months. 

“I have no idea.”


End file.
